Welcome to the IFLR1000 2025 research!
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If you would like to speak to someone about our research, please Contact our team
If you are ready to submit your forms, please go straight to the Accreditation Portal - if not, carry on reading below
Key research documents
IFLR1000 Research form
IFLR1000 Client referee form
IFLR1000 Practice area categories by jurisdictions (with 2025 deadlines)
IFLR1000 Practice area definitions
February 12 2025
Americas: United States; Mexico; The Caribbean
Asia-Pacific: China; Southeast and Eastern Asia
Europe, Middle East & Africa: Central Eastern Europe; Western Europe
June 30 2025
Americas: Canada; Latin America
Asia-Pacific: Central Asia; Southern Asia & Australasia
Europe, Middle East & Africa: Africa; Middle East & Egypt
Please check the deadline for the exact jurisdiction you are submitting for here: IFLR1000 Submission Deadlines in 2025
How to participate in IFLR1000
Any firm advising on financial and corporate or project-related legal work can participate in the research for our rankings by submitting a research form and providing a list of supporting client referees.
There is no fee to participate in the research.
Firms can submit one research form and supporting client referees per practice area and jurisdiction.
Guidelines for the research templates
To participate in our research you will need to complete our research form and client referee form.
Research form (Word document)
- Section1: lawyer nominations for our individual lawyer ratings
- Section 2: key information about the practice and updates on recent changes
- Section 3: 10 highlights per practice area (please do not submit more than 10 deals per form). Only submit deals that directly support your submission for the relevant practice area
Client referee form (Excel sheet)
Contact details of client referees we can survey for their opinion on the performance of firms and lawyers.
All referee contact details must be submitted via the Excel template.
Client referees must have worked with the firm in the 18 months prior making your submission on work relevant to our research. Firms should submit no more than 20 referees per practice area - all referees provided by the submission deadline will be contacted.
How to submit
Making a submission
There are three steps to the submission process:
- DOWNLOAD WORD RESEARCH FORM and complete as fully as possible
- DOWNLOAD EXCEL RESEARCH FORM and complete as fully as possible
- REGISTER AND UPLOAD COMPLETED FORMS TO LEGAL BENCHMARKING GROUP ACCREDITATION PORTAL (one of each form for each practice area submission for a jurisdiction)
LBG Accreditation Portal benefits:
- Create account that will store historic submissions
- Detailed submission alerts
- Ability to submit referees using Excel
Please note
- All forms (Excel and Word) should be made through the Accreditation Portal
- We cannot accept submissions via email
- Firms must create an account to use the Portal
- Accounts must be created using your firm’s official email domain. If you are representing a law firm, please ask your main contact in the firm to register and upload the firm’s submission(s)
- Do not submit research forms using PDF format
- If you have any questions about the submission process, please contact accreditation@delinian.com
Research timetable 2025
Below are the key research deadlines for all IFLR1000 research to be published in calendar year 2025.
Research interviews conducted: March - September 2025
Submission deadline: To find the submission deadline for your jurisdiction, please view here: IFLR1000 Submission Deadlines in 2025
Client Referee Feedback Survey: April - August 2025
Research Publication dates
- All firm rankings and lawyer ratings will be published by region.
- Publishing dates: TBD
Research methodology
IFLR1000 evaluates law firms and lawyers by practice area within a jurisdiction based on transactional deal evidence and client feedback.
We do not research arbitration, competition, disputes, employment, IP, life sciences, litigation, or tax work. Any work submitted that falls into these practice areas will not be taken into account.
Transaction assessment criteria
IFLR1000 assesses transactions by their legal innovation or sophistication, the challenges they navigated and their impact on the market. Firms and lawyers that consistently – over several research cycles – advise on the most complex or innovative transactions in their markets, and whose excellent work is corroborated by clients, will be ranked or rated highly. See ‘Firm ranking and lawyer rating criteria’ section for more detail.
Jurisdiction criteria
IFLR1000 ranks firms according to the work undertaken by firms’ lawyers based in a jurisdiction.
A “jurisdiction” can refer to any jurisdiction with a distinct legal framework, including national jurisdiction and regional/state-level jurisdictions.
Only firms with an office in a jurisdiction licensed by a local bar association can be ranked in that jurisdiction’s rankings. Lawyers must be licensed and based in a country to be rated at a national level there.
IFLR1000 China
IFLR1000 China researches firms and lawyers in the provinces/municipalities listed below. The research is undertaken and published in Mandarin and English. Firms can submit work that falls into any of our core practice areas (see ‘Practice area ranking categories’ section).
- Beijing
- Chongqing
- Guangdong
- Jiangsu
- Shandong
- Shanghai
- Shaanxi
- Sichuan
- Tianjin
- Zhejiang
Practice area ranking categories
IFLR1000 ranks firms and lawyers by practice area. Our research focuses on financial and corporate and project development work. We assess work in the following practice areas (a financial and corporate ranking is based on all the types of work listed below excluding project development):
- Banking
- Capital markets
- Financial services regulatory
- Investment funds
- M&A / transactional private equity
- Project development
- Project finance
- Restructuring and insolvency
To view how we define our practice areas and the type of work that can be submitted for each practice area, download our PRACTICE AREA DEFINITIONS.
The practice areas we produce rankings for vary by country, depending on the breadth and depth of in a market and the degree of specialization that firms and lawyers have in the area.
To view which practice areas we currently produce rankings for in your, please see our PRACTICE AREA CATEGORIES BY JURISDICTION *.
Note - *We accept submissions from firms based anywhere in the world and will produce rankings for any jurisdiction where we have sufficient deal evidence and client feedback.
Firm ranking and lawyer rating criteria
Our law firm rankings and lawyer ratings are based on three key criteria:
Deal evidence
In each research cycle we ask firms to provide deal highlights since January 1 of the previous year.
Deal evidence is the decisive factor to determine a firm’s ranking and lawyer’s rating. Firms submit work to us via the research form.
In the context of the jurisdiction and practice area, we assess deals on the basis of:
- Complexity
- Innovation
- Market impact
When making an assessment of firm’s work we also take into account:
- The volume of complex work a firm does in an area
- Evidence of a consistent high market share of complex deals in the jurisdiction and practice area
- Client feedback that corroborates the quality of work on deals
- Our own research, including deal intelligence gathered from IFLR Awards and IFLR editorial
- Statistical evidence of transactions values and volumes produced by external publications
Client feedback
We use client feedback to help us assess the quality of advice and service lawyers and firms are providing. We survey tens of thousands of corporate and in-house contacts provided to us by participating firms annually to ask their opinions on the firms and lawyers they use.
Client feedback is used in support of transactional evidence when determining a firm’s ranking or lawyer’s rating. What this means is good feedback alone will not ensure a firm or lawyer is ranked or rated, a firm or individual must be experienced in advising on significant work.
When you submit you should try and provide referees for all the lawyers at the firm you feel should be rated. A lawyer working on significant matters who receives a reasonable amount of good client feedback is more likely to be rated.
Increasing response rate of referees
Some ways we have found increase the number of referees who respond to our survey are:
- Confirm that your referees are happy for us to contact them before you provide their details to us.
- Only provide referees the firm has advised on work relevant to our rankings tables.
- Only provide referees the firm has advised on relevant work in the 18 months prior to submitting.
- Notify your referees when we will be contacting them. We email all firms in advance of contacting their referees with details about the email referees receive.
Market insight
We conduct many interviews with practitioners, over the phone and in-person, to gather market intelligence. This allows us to gain a better understanding of market trends, so that we can better assess the significance of transactions and keep our rankings ahead of the curve.
IFLR1000 Lawyer Survey
During each research cycle we conduct a survey of lawyers to get their thoughts and feedback on the firms and lawyers in their markets. All partners and senior lawyers active in work relevant our research are invited to participate.
The annual Lawyer Survey is an opportunity for lawyers to provide evidence to support a Leading Lawyer rating and to have their say on our rankings and ratings.
Lawyers can provide us with recent examples of their work and details about their practice area and industry sector specialisms, which will be assessed when we evaluate our Leading Lawyer ratings.
Leading Lawyers
In addition to firm rankings, IFLR1000 also recognizes the work of outstanding individuals.
IFLR1000’s lawyer ranking categories are primarily based on transactional evidence, client feedback and peer recognition. When you highlight lawyers for a category in your submission, please include examples of each nominee’s work within the research cycle in the Deal Highlights section and referees (using the Client Referee Form) who can provide feedback on their work.
IFLR1000 only recognise lawyers in the jurisdiction where they are based.
Market Leader: This is the highest rating and recognises partners who are the true leaders in their practice area(s) and jurisdiction(s). These lawyers are actively leading on many of the most sophisticated, impactful and demanding transactions and are viewed as market leaders by clients and peers alike. Market Leaders will be backed by plenty of transactional evidence with demonstrable top-of-market expertise in their fields.
Women Leader: To be ranked Women Leader, lawyers must meet the criteria for Market Leader (stated above) or must hold high status within their market for their leadership abilities. Not only are Women Leaders well established in the practices and specialisms, but they have also shown leadership in the context of nurturing talented women in business law. See ‘Women Leaders’ section for more detail.
Highly Regarded: This is the second highest rating for individual lawyers in IFLR1000. It recognises partners who have outstanding deal records in the practice in question and are highly regarded by clients and peers. Highly Regarded lawyers will be actively leading on complex and innovative transactions and will be well established in their partnership.
Expert Consultant: This rating recognises senior figures with strong name recognition who focus on consulting and building client relationships. These are individuals who may stepped back from the active client work to serve as rainmakers or figureheads for a practice. They may have taken on purely leadership and consulting roles but are seen by the market at large as influential thought leaders.
Rising Star Partner: Lawyers who made partner relatively recently who are working on complex deals and are recommended by clients or peers. To be eligible for this rating, lawyers must have made partner within three years of the current submission deadline. Only lawyers who were promoted to partner within three years of the submission deadline are eligible for this rating.
Rising Star: Ones to watch – lawyers building their reputations in the market who are working on notable deals and are recommended by clients or peers. Only non-partners who qualified within 15 years of the submission deadline are eligible for this rating. Eligible candidates cannot have made partner and must have no more than 15 years post qualification experience.
Notable Practitioner: This rating recognises experienced and well-regarded lawyers who have developed recognised specialisms in relevant practice areas and have carved out a name and space for themselves in those areas. Rated lawyers will have records of advising on significant deals in the jurisdiction and practice area(s) in question, with demonstrable evidence of expertise, client-based and deal work in the field.
Women Leaders
IFLR1000 Women Leader is an elite ranking category reserved for the most prominent women lawyers across the world working in the areas of law IFLR1000 researches.
To be ranked Women Leader, lawyers must have outstanding reputations for working on complex or innovative deals or must hold high status within their market for their leadership abilities.
Lawyers must be working in the areas of financial and corporate transactions or regulation, or in contract, licensing or regulatory work related to project development to be eligible for this rating category.
IFLR1000 uses evidence submitted on research forms and client and peer feedback as the primary resource for Women Leaders' research.
Research process
IFLR1000's research teams analyse thousands of Research Forms, conduct thousands of interviews with law firm partners and market experts, and survey tens of thousands of clients to determine IFLR1000's Women Leaders. The research methodology follows that of IFLR1000’s leading lawyers.
Women Leaders 2026 will be based primarily on submissions made in 2025.
The best way to participate in the Women Leaders research is through the annual IFLR1000 research cycle. Firms can nominate lawyers on the IFLR1000 research form and should include deal for each individual they nominate.
FAQs
Please review our list of most frequently asked questions for details on use of the accreditation portal, our submission process, ranking decisions, the research interview process and publications. If there’s a question we have not answered in our FAQs, please email our research team
IFLR1000 is part of the Legal Benchmarking Group.
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